Israel is Planning for the Inevitable

But this state of affairs is also a function of the complete failure of Russian “reset.” As Jamie Kirchick explains in the Wall Street Journal, Russia’s reaction to the IAEA warning about Iran’s progress toward obtaining nuclear weapons reveals that “reset” was simply appeasement in a hoop skirt:

A Russian government statement last Wednesday, by contrast, ridiculed [the IAEA report] as “a compilation of well-known facts that have intentionally been given a politicized intonation.”

The Russian statement, which could be mistaken for something produced by the Iranian regime, alleged that the report’s authors “resort to assumptions and suspicions, and juggle information with the purpose of creating the impression that the Iranian nuclear program has a military component.”

Moscow’s reaction serves as a stunning rebuke to U.S. President Barack Obama, whose administration has staked much on obtaining greater Russian cooperation on Iran’s nuclear program. When President Obama was selling the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or New Start, to the U.S. Senate last year, he promised that a major benefit would be that it would put Russia on America’s side in preventing Iran from getting nuclear weapons. . . .

In 2009, it canceled missile defense sites planned for Poland and the Czech Republic, two of America’s strongest and most reliable European allies. The U.S. has desisted in selling weapons to Georgia, 20% of whose territory Russia continues to occupy three years after a war that left tens of thousands displaced. And last Thursday, Russia was allowed to join the World Trade Organization after an 18-year process.

Meanwhile, Moscow has regressed on nearly every issue on which the administration promised improved behavior, from human rights to joining the Western consensus on Iran.